


these tender embers

by goldafterglow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Intimacy, Mutual Pining, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other, idk this is just very heartbreaking and yet heartwarming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29691621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldafterglow/pseuds/goldafterglow
Summary: Din Djarin explores intimacy with you.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Reader, Din Djarin/You, The Mandalorian/Reader, The Mandalorian/You
Comments: 19
Kudos: 74





	1. honeycomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mandalorian does not take care of himself properly and it drives you absolutely mad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is my most popular work back on tumblr. I hope you all enjoy it too :)

It’s difficult for him.

He’s not very good at asking for what he wants. And he _wants_ you. Sometimes when he lays in his bed and closes his eyes he could swear he can feel you in his arms, safe in his tight embrace. When he looks at you cradling the baby in your arms, his _son_ , he sometimes thinks he might step behind you and wrap himself around your torso, bury his unhelmeted face in your soft hair that he’s _also_ fantasized about - he thinks it might smell like flowers and peaches. And when he comes back to the Crest with a dagger lodged in his bicep, his wound weeping red, he’s so certain your touch is in itself healing. He thinks he can put his uninjured hand under your jaw and run his thumb over your hot tears, tell you that “ _Cyar’ika_ , you don’t have to worry. I’m okay now; I could _never_ abandon you.”

But he lays in bed alone. He watches you coo to his child, standing in the middle of the room like on a planet entirely covered in grass you are the only daisy, swaying in the breeze. And he watches you cry.

It’s very difficult for him.

He wasn’t ever taught how to open himself up, create a cozy corner in his body for someone to be able to rest. He _knows_ that it can’t feel great to be shut out by him, like two people co-parenting a green frog-eating womp-rat that live together and yet somehow have never spoken before. Like strangers. So he makes an effort. He takes his gloves off in front of you. He’s stopped flinching when you touch his armor for no reason - it had taken him a while to understand that sometimes, touch is a _good_ thing. He says “call me Mando”. And he calls you _cyar’ika_. _Mesh’la_. You don’t know what it means, but he does. It’s like he’s got this dirty little secret that he’s keeping from you, and he can tell you’ve gotten used to him saying it by the way you always respond to the words.

He dreams about the day he’ll tell you what they mean.

His feelings are too intense for him to handle. Everything you do hurts him, every touch like an electric shock that bites at his skin and eats away at him until he’s nothing but exposed muscle and bone dripping red tears onto the cold metal of his own ship. Even when he looks at you, coddling the baby first thing in the morning, he feels a sharp pain like something that is unimaginably deep right in his hardened lungs at just _seeing_ you. He doesn’t understand why it’s so agonizing to look at your vision, and he _certainly_ doesn’t understand why he always wants to see you.

Gluttony.

But he can’t help but smile when you tell him in his full armor that he “looks like shit.” His heart swells when you tell him that he should get checked for brain damage when when comes back to the ship with a splinter because “sometimes you can be so dense, Mando.” Because you can tease him all you want, but at the end of the day you’ll still patch him up. You’ll always be worried about him. And it’s the type of concern he craves, feeding his furious longing for compassion with the firewood of your kindness until his own fulfillment consumes him in the smoke.

Your smile is like the rainbow shimmer of a lake under the sleepy morning sun, sprinkling ice water on his hot stuffy face after a day of running in his helmet. You’ve done this horrible, toxic thing of making him feel worthy of something more than reluctant partnership, dripping your sweet poison honey into the cracks that have built up in his heart and filling his hollow spaces without even trying.

You’re a dangerous person.

And there’s no _way_ you could ever ache the way he does when he’s looking at this person that he wants so bad. His emotions are so powerful it’s frightening, and he’d have to be a fool to think that you’d be so naive as you feel so intensely for a heaping collection of beskar and scars. He has nothing to offer you, nothing for you to _fall for_ , and sometimes when it’s late in the night and you’re sleeping with the baby on your chest because he kept whining when you’d try to put him down, he’s too scared to take his armor off. What if he takes off his helmet and there’s nothing there? What if underneath all of the shields and guards and protection, he’s empty?

He’s always certain there’s something inside of the armor when he feels you touch him.

But you can’t fall in love with a ghost.

It’s late when you enter the cockpit. He’s half asleep already, barely able to keep his eyes open as the windows let in nothing but utter darkness sprinkled with starlight like the flick of white paint on a black canvas. You’re not even sure he registers you entering, bare arms huddled close to your chest because he keeps it so _cold_ up here. In your hands you hold a warm bowl of soup, something you know he can’t eat in front of you but that you know he needs. He’d been gone for _days_ and that planet was fucking _hot._ He’d been all fucked up when he came back to you, littered in bruises and caked in blood. And yet here he was, sitting in the pilot’s seat like some bacta spray and a shower had fixed all of his problems.

Sometimes, you can’t help but think that he’s absurd.

“Mando?” you call softly, not wanting to wake him if he’s asleep but also not wanting him to starve. He hadn’t eaten anything when he’d gotten back. He’d let you patch him up the best you could, run a loving hand over his baby’s big ears, and you hadn’t seen him since. Such a small ship and yet he somehow always manages to evade you, like he’s hiding something from you. Hiding what’s inside the beskar, inside of his own _skin_.

You hear the grainy sound of a long, deep breath, followed by a soft grunt. “What?”

“I just brought you something to eat.” You move to his side, holding out the bowl filled three quarters of the way with a simple broth. Not the heartiest meal, but this man hadn’t even drank _water_ as far as you knew. He’d been so focused on getting off the planet that he hadn’t even told you where you were going yet.

Mando sits up straight, resisting the urge to rub his eyes to avoid looking stupid in front of you. When he turns his head to look up at you he can tell you’re upset with him, almost angry, and he doesn’t have to wonder what he did to assume he deserves it.

“ _Cyar’ika_ , you didn’t have to-”

“Just kriffing take it, Mando,” you insist, tone aggressive as you push the bowl forward at him. You don’t know what’s gotten into you; you know how tired he must be, know how fucked up he got, but you can’t find it in yourself to be a little soft for him because he won’t even take a second to just think about himself and it drives you _crazy_ that your mind seems to want to make up for his missing concern by making you _extra_ concerned for him.

Oh.

_You’re worried about him._

Mando raises his hands in front of his chest before taking the bowl from you wordlessly, and it’s not lost on you what it must mean to have him surrender to you. He moves slow, the weight of his sleep still dripping off of him like molasses on tree bark, and his grip is weaker than usual. He’s just _sleepy_.

“Promise me you’ll finish it,” you demand, staring down at him with an authority that only you held. If you could see his face, you’d probably have melted at his doe eyes looking up at you because he feels _bad_ for getting you so worked up. You might make his chest feel like it’s melting but he’d be damned if he ever hurt you, made you even a little upset.

“Okay,” he yields, holding the bowl up as a symbol of his capitulation. “I promise.” You leave the cockpit without another word, practically storming off and down the ladder so you can brood in the dark.

Twenty minutes later, you’re still pacing at the bottom of that ladder.

You can’t stop thinking about how harsh you were to him, how compliant he had been in putting up with your stupid temper tantrum. Why did he always do that? You know he listens to you, does almost anything you ask of him because it’s always _for_ him. He forgets to do things like eat and drink and just kriffing take care of himself because he gets so caught up in caring for you and the baby, constantly pouring himself out for other people and infuriatingly unbothered that he never saves a drop for himself.

You think he must be done with the soup by now. Strictly for utility’s sake, you should probably go get the bowl from him.

For utility.

When he hears you walk back into the cockpit he’s still sat with his legs practically at 180 degrees of each other. He’s leaning down a little, having slid down the chair with the now empty bowl resting on his stomach. He’s fiddling with the rim like an idiot, still stuck thinking about how fed up you had looked handing him the bowl like he’s just another baby to take care of. He wonders if you’re really sick of him, wonders if you’re truly tired of always having to chase him around to do these simple things that adults are supposed to handle themselves. He imagines that you’d be better off on your own.

“Finished?” he hears you say. He feels you return to his side, but when he looks up at you your eyes are softer than they had been. You look almost as tired as him, arms crossed tightly because of the frigid temperature.

He nods, handing you the empty bowl carefully and pausing at the moment that your hands touch it as if he could be brushing your fingers via proxy, holding your hands through the hollow space between them. You sigh softly, tapping the curve of the ceramic idly as you just stand there for a second. He catches you hesitating, sensing a change of heart before you turn around to leave again. The interaction is strained, awkward, and yet he can’t help but feel like you’re taking his heart with him as you step out.

“Wait, _mesh’la_ ,” he calls, too tense look back at you. You’re a little embarrassed at how quickly you falter, almost tripping over nothing to stop yourself. “Will you - I mean you _can_ , only if you want to of course, I’m sure you’re tired-”

“What is it, Mando?” you interrupt, halting his nervous rambling with an interjection so kind and loving that you can barely recognize whose voice is speaking, but you’re proud that you managed it.

“Stay.”

The word hangs in the freezing air, slowly expanding until the space becomes warm and your breaths get heavy. It presses down on your shoulders, shoving you down into the ground to the point that you can’t move anymore, can’t think or speak because the coal of his forced distance is starting to yield _diamonds_ , shimmering like the dew on pliable blades of green grass as the sun begins to wake up.

You put the bowl to the side and sit in the seat to his right.

You’re quiet, too paralyzed by how intense it feels for _the_ _Mandalorian_ to be asking for you in a way that is so vulnerable that you almost want to protect him, _shield him_ from anyone that might take advantage.

“Are you cold?” he croaks out. He must have noticed your shivering. He’s always paying close attention to you. But the question strikes a loose nerve, one that he’s always tugging and prodding at like he’s testing your limits, trying to see how much you can take.

“Why do you always do that?” _Oh shit_. It had been the one notion on your mind, the first thing you had thought of when he asked, and you instantly want to take it back but you know it’s too late now.

“I’m confused,” he admits. He’s afraid what you’re going to ask, scared of the answer that might come spilling out of his mouth like he’s dousing kerosene on himself just so that you can start the flame.

“You’re just - you’re always so concerned about other people, Mando.” He’s not sure if this is a compliment or a grievance of yours, and he’s _certainly_ not sure how he’s supposed to respond. He’s never been so afraid of a person, so afraid of _hurting_ a person, that the fear sends ice through his veins and cracks in under his skin, sharp fractals peaking out to destroy him from within.

“I’m sorry?” He intends it to be an apology, but it comes out as more of an inquiry.

“ _Maker_ , Mando that’s not what I mean,” you huff. You’re not even sure what you want to tell him. Or _how._ How do you say that you care about a person so intensely that the mere thought of their smile makes you ascend to the soft waxy leaves of the rainforest canopy? How do you tell him that when he’s injured you cry not because you’re frustrated but because it _breaks you_ to see him like that with tears in his tissue paper heart, busted open and yet refusing to let you in and hold him? How do you let him know that you don’t want him to suffer in silence? That you want to be there for him through the beskar?

How do you say “I love you?”

“I just wish you’d care about yourself the way I know you care about me and the baby,” you blurt. “Mando I _know_ it’s hard for you to open up and I don’t want to ask you to, but I can _handle_ you. You won’t break me by letting me carry some of the world for you. I just wish you’d _let me_.”

You’re both looking each other dead in the eyes, breaths loud and heavy over the rumble of the Razor Crest soaring through the space, and right now not even the stars exist. It’s just him and you, pathetically whipped for each other and beginning to break the dams holding back the red monsoon of pent up emotions.

“ _Cyar’ika_ , I don’t think I’ll ever care about _anything_ the way I care about you and him,” he confesses. His voice is soft, almost reduced to a breath with chiseled dents around the column of air.

Cautiously, your hand reaches out into the void to find his, the feeling of his glove under your fingers like the back of the baby’s head: familiar. He glances down, feeling his greed get the best of him and spread through his throat like the wicked tendrils of a willow, and with the courage festered by his neediness he intertwines his fingers with yours. You feel gold burst in your lungs and the tide push against your eyes at the sensation. It’s _magnificent_ , almost unfathomable how _good_ it feels to have leather lodged between your fingers.

“I wish you loved yourself, the way…” you trail off, trying to untangle the words from the stray branches and splintered wood of your cowardice, “…the way _I_ love you.”

His air is stuck at the bottom of his lungs, suddenly so condensed and so _difficult_ to release as his grip tightens around your hand. He’s utterly _floored_. He hadn’t even entertained the possibility that at the end of the dark, long tunnel of his yearning you were looking right back at him, probably mocking him for how foolish he is. This wasn’t supposed to be how it happened; people are supposed to make big deals out of these things, aren’t they? Flowers and candles and dinner like a massive display of affection, a whole humiliating ordeal. Or even better: he dies. He dies and never has to tell you. That would’ve been much nicer for him. But _this?_ He’s a butterfly in a lake plucked out of the comfortable warm air and drowned in a cold, new environment that he’s never seen before; he didn’t get to practice his words by himself in the mirror, thinking about the thousands of ways that you could reject him and the thousands of ways that he could react.

At least he doesn’t have anything to lose anymore.

“I think that would mean loving you a little less, wouldn’t it?” he asks softly. Your jaw is quivering now, lip quaking as you inhale sharply through your nose to regain some sort of control over the situation because he has just ripped off the thickest armor around his soul and now that you’re looking inside, seeing who he _really_ is, you just see a _man._ A benevolent, tender person that is just so kriffing _scared_ of being hurt that he’d rather dip himself in the concrete of silence.

He tugs on your arm tentatively, like he’s still somehow afraid that you’ll get up and spit in his face, slice his throat on the blade of your cruel repudiation and walk out into the stars. You carefully get up, beginning to approach his seat, and it’s all the confirmation he needs to yank you onto his lap and wrap his arms around you like he’s holding on for dear life. His hands are gripping your shirt, pulling you tight into the divots of his honeycomb chest and filling his holes with your thick peach nectar, sticky and so _sweet_. You think you might sob as you hold him back, chin pressed into his helmet and hands pushing him into your neck.

Holding you is the easiest thing he’s ever done.


	2. sugar petals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mando struggles with intimacy, but you’re starting to warm him up. Just a little.

Din Djarin has always been afraid of you.

He listens to you too much. He’s always been compliant to your will, rarely fussy when you make demands of him. When you tell him to let you “waste” a bacta patch on him, tell him he has to eat, tell him he has to sleep, it’s as if it were his mother bossing him around. But you’re not bossy; you’re assertive. He likes to see it in you. But he doesn’t like being so vulnerable, subject to heeding your words at the snap of your fingers.

He’s never had any reason to believe that you’d hurt him. You’ve _never_ done that. If anything, you help _heal_ him, gentle hands cleansing his weeping wounds and wrapping them tight in the warm embrace of gauze and bacta spray. But you _could_ hurt him. If you really wanted to. You could pull away when he tries to touch you, tell him that a monster like him doesn’t deserve goodness and light, isn’t worth all the pain of taking care of him because he’s never going to offer anything in return, never going to be whole or good enough to be worth love.

You could tell him the truth.

So he never tried to touch you. He never reached out in the dark, never brushed his bare knuckles against your cheek or ran his fingers through your hair. He’d wanted to, _stars_ he wanted to. But he never wanted to fiddle with this gem suspended between the two of you because it’s already teetering, already balanced on its sharp, fine point, and he thinks that if he so much as blows near it he’ll lose any semblance of that golden warmth with you.

Yet here you are, situated in his lap like two long lost lovers, and in a way you are. Not separated by space but by the icy distance of his anxious, cold nature. Din has a way of making inches seem like miles between himself and you, his resolve so _powerful_ that he somehow has the strength to keep his hands off of you when you’re right kriffing next to him. And it feels so good to be reunited, to finally be brought to you without the barbed minefield of your potential rejection. His forehead is pressed into space between your collarbones, dark and safe for him to close his eyes. He can’t feel your hands on the back of his helmet, holding him close, but he knows and that’s comforting enough. To know. His fingers are still gripping at your top, so tight that they’ve probably gone stark white underneath the burnt sienna leather of his gloves. He has no idea how long he’s been like this with you, but he knows that whether it’s been minutes or hours, it’ll never be long enough.

 _Maker_ , when will it be enough?

He holds his place for a while, so overwhelmed by the notion that he’s been granted the privilege to bow his head against you that he needs to let the blinding sensory overload subside. As the smoke clears from his shut eyes, dissipating into the clouds, he starts to make out the paradise he’s immersed in. It’s quiet here, but not eerie. The sky casts a multicolored glow, gentle but firm strokes of rose and peach light illuminating the vibrant grass that crunches under his feet. This is a place he could stay in forever; just him, his baby, and you. It’s not a foreign vision; he’s dreamed of this place before, an oasis for him to finally rest his bones. He is married to you, his body and soul eternally intertwined with your in a way that is paradoxically liberating. He is free to show himself, _all_ of himself, to you; every cut, chipped corner, furrowed brow and helpless smile. He’s sitting on a blanket, some colorful thing laid out on the grass and soaking up the dew into its fibers, and he can feel that dampness through the fabric of his own pants because he’s not in armor anymore, doesn’t need to be. You’re leaned back against his chest, head nestled under his chin as he talks to you softly, recounting the “good old days” into your ear, and you can _feel_ his hot breath flow off his tongue just as he can feel the lobe of your ear against his quivering lips. He can feel everything. Uninhibited.

And off in the distance, his _ad’ika_. Both of your _ad’ika_. That endearing little green boy, waddling around in the grass and picking flowers, occasionally getting distracted from his quest by a gentle butterfly that he just _has_ to chase. And as the sun begins to go down and the first piercing shimmers of starlight begin to show themselves in the night sky, you call to him, tell him that his _buir_ have missed him, and he comes waddling right back into your arms. And he is so boundlessly _happy_ , peaceful with his _aliit_ safe in his arms. _His clan._

Impossible things.

Because he knows he has to return the foundling to his people eventually - already, a third of his clan gone. Sometimes he tries to convince itself that it’s like returning an animal to the wild, where it’s better off with his own kind. Except he’s not a pet, he’s _not_ an animal - he is his _son_. His _ad’ika_ , his baby boy, one of the only people he’d die for, and it hurts _so much_ to think about laying in that meadow, watching nothing. Waiting for no one. It tears at his hollow heart, leaves a blackened char along the thin rim of his ribcage and makes him feel like whatever black sludge is being held into his sternum by beskar and skin is pouring out.

It suddenly occurs to him that he hasn’t felt you move in a long time.

When he comes back to his senses, dragging himself out of the merciless obsidian pit of his own thoughts, he’s reminded that he’s still pressed up against you. Being coddled by you, held in your embrace. He is supposed to be the warrior, the protector of his clan, and yet there isn’t any amount of beskar that could make him feel safer than you do. You’re so much stronger than him, so much braver. There is something powerful in the gentle but deliberate grip of your hands, the way you aren’t afraid to tell him what to do or how to treat you. Like your fingers were made to cup his worn, barren soul and rejuvenate him, fill him with your gold and make him visible.

He can’t ask things of you the way you can of him. _Stop fidgeting in the cockpit. Put the baby in my lap. Let me look at your eyes. Hold me. Please. Hold me._ No; he can’t ask these things of you.

He’s good at stoicism, a carefully honed skill for staying completely still in stalk of his prey, but right now he’s using it to listen to your soft breathing, so steady in his smothering grip. The delicate puffs of a resting lioness.

He knows you can’t be very comfortable, chin pressed up against the hard surface of his helmet and neck craned almost backward. But it’s against his better judgement to take you to bed, leave you to lay there in peace, because he’s far too selfish to stop holding you, to stop experiencing you without shame or fear of your rejection.

He suddenly becomes aware of his still intense grip on your top, wrinkling the delicate fabric, and he relaxes his fingers. His left hand can’t resist the urge to splay out. Even through the leather there is something mystifying about the way your back feels under his fingertips, sticking to his gloves as his fingers spread out like the petals of a sunflower, open and basking in the Sun’s glow. His right hand moves slowly, carefully leaving your back and coming up to his _pauldron_. It takes him a second to dislodge it one handedly, a thick sigh of relief passing through his voice modulator and coming out as a low buzz as he successfully pulls it off and gently places it on a clear space on the control board.

His shoulder is broad, the muscle on it bunched and tough from years of more than aggressive use, but it’s better than a kriffing pauldron. The flesh is knotted, full of secrets and burdens that he may never liberate, but the baby never seems to mind when he rocks him to sleep and he hopes you won’t either.

He leans back into his seat, both to keep you comfortable and to see if you‘re _really_ out. His heart stutters when you move, readjusting to the new position. You shift your weight higher up his legs, brazenly nearing his hips and scaling a ledge so small that the slightest roll forwards could send you failing off into waters too murky to make sense of, too dark and toxic to come back from.

But you don’t.

He hears you whine, still asleep but clearly disturbed, and he panics as you begin to sir. His left hand reaches up to the back of your head, slowly shifting you off of his helmet and down onto his bare shoulder. You’re still gripping ever so slightly, breaths confused and eyes quivering, and he feels so _bad_ because he doesn’t want you to feel so disoriented in his embrace; he wants you to feel _safe_. So with whatever courage he can draw from his remaining dignity, he starts shushing you, the little crackles in his voice like the sweet brush of dandelion petals against your throat.

“ _Shh, cyar’ika_ , it’s _okay_ ,” he whispers softly, praying that it doesn’t fall upon your conscious ears and stays buried in the muddled memories of your fading dreams. He’s glad you can’t see his pink joy flush through his cheeks when he feels you resituate yourself into his shoulder, suddenly far more comfortable than before as his warmth begins to travel to your soft cheek. His hand finds the back of your head, pressing you into the plush of his flesh. The pressure against your forehead must be intense, he knows, but when you lean into it, almost hurting him a little as you grasp desperately for the exit of consciousness, he doesn’t let up. Like a tight, crushing embrace when fear and anxiety set in, squeezing out every last drop of pain until only the embrace remains, only the warmth. Before he even knows it, you’ve latched onto the sandwoman and let her drag you into her ethereal dreamscape, drifting amongst the clouds over the meadow. _That_ meadow.

And just as you fall back asleep, his head turns to look at you, so peaceful against him, and he can’t hold his own greed at bay as he murmurs so softly to you, like he’s trying to feed you the last sweet suckles of a subliminal message: “ _Dream of me_.”

He likes to think that you hear him.

It’s once he’s no longer under your watchful gaze that he gains some confidence, a little gusto, because he wouldn’t be caught dead doing what he is about to do. His hands are greedy, aching to truly _feel you_ against his palms, so with the utmost care he takes his gloves off, placing them neatly next to the pauldon. He imagines he must look strange, a little disheveled with all of that protective gear missing. His eyes are squeezed shut, like he’s scared he’ll open them and your incriminating gaze will be staring right back at him. He doesn’t really want to use any of his other senses anyways, except perhaps his ears so he can hear the soft pass of a sleepy breath from your nose, slow and deep and _easy_. The hot air sweeps under his helmet a little, sticking to his jaw, and he thinks that he might let you paint your lungs all over his face.

And then he touches you.

It’s different without the gloves. It’s almost painful, his nerves so _sensitive_ as his skin catches on the cotton fibers of your top. But he lets his left hand rest at the base of your neck, tips caressing your bare skin like it’s the most intimate he’ll ever get with anyone. He’s brushing lightly, up and down so as to put you at peace while fulfilling his own desire to feel every inch of you before he dies. It’s surreal, to let your warmth permeate his beskar and place little pink pockets of joy in his pores. Glimmering moments of exhilarating glee where his heart is racing and he’s choking on his own sweat and it’s so _wonderful_.

There’s a unique puff of air that sticks to the roof of his mouth, tastes like sugar petals and honeysuckle. And when he takes the pad of his thumb and eyes the curve of your back, the long track of your spine, he has never felt more enticed. His fingers are eager, needy, _covetous_. Before he can stop himself he’s lightly pressing the flesh of his finger into the whispering dip, tracing the line all the way down with reverence. The air in his mouth melts on his tongue, sweet and saccharine, and he’s not sure how he is so eye-wellingly overwhelmed by touching you.

He has never looked at someone so reverently before. He wonders if, were you to look at him through his helmet, you’d be able to tell just how whipped he is. If you could feel the pathetic illness called love radiating off of him. In the black of his closed eyes, he repaints the image of you with his fingers. He sees your back, bared to the wind and full of divots and dips for him to let his fingers sink into. That small space of skin at the nape of your neck that he gets to touch, like a guilty pleasure that he indulges in. There’s a shot through his body when he feels you bare, presses two fingers into the soft flesh of your shoulder. It’s warm, _stars_ how warm it is, burning through the swirls and loops on his fingers and imprinting hearts into him. He likes the sting. With a discipline that can only be acquired from decades of self-restraint, his right hand raises to your hair. It’s at this that he wonders if perhaps _this_ is the true paradise, wonders if it’s possible to be in greater awe of someone. The locks are so _soft_ between his fingers, or at least a sharp contrast to the calloused, marred surface of his palms, and he lets it brush his fingers a little bit through this lapse of child-like curiosity and wonder. His nails are light against your scalp, fingers massaging, and he knows it’s more deliberate than just the accidental scrape but he just can’t be helped, is beyond saving. He’s helpless in soaking all of you in, maybe even go so far as to let his left hand dip under your top slightly and feel that vast expanse of skin on your lower back, because for Maker’s sake if he’s going to get an opportunity like this to let his guard down without you even knowing about it, then he’s going to take it.

Through his swollen throat, puffy with sleep and his daze, he whispers meekly to you, or perhaps even to himself.

“ _Mesh’la_.”

He falls asleep like that.

When he wakes up, he immediately registers the soft noises coming from the pram. It’s probably morning now; the Crest has been in hyperspace for _hours_ , and he knows he should be more concerned about where you all are, but he can’t bring himself to care when his son is crying underneath him in the ship and you’re still pressed up against him.

You’re just as quick as him, instantly waking to the sounds of the crying baby. You’re well attuned to his motions, as if you can sense his stirring like a premonition. You’re nothing if not disoriented - where _are_ you? Before you move you’re starting recognizing every little sensation. Metal plates pressed up against the backs of your thighs, a warm hand pressed against your lower back, limp fingers resting idly in your hair. _Mando_. He’s tangled up in the thickets of you and it feels so _nice_ to be intertwined with him, almost untangleable. But the baby’s crying gets louder and starts to pulse in your forehead, throbbing against your skull. You let out a soft yawn into the dip of his neck, hot and heavy as the weighted air passes around him, and you feel his hand leave your head to delicately cup your cheek.

His bare hand.

You don’t lift your head very far before falling against his forehead, one last loving press to say good morning and to remind him how _not alone_ he is. He sighs heavy, enough that you can hear it over the voice modulator, and he nudges up against your face a little. Pushing his face up against yours, a suffocating intimacy that he wants to choke him out, all the way up until his eyes are stars and his pores are craters in the moon. He becomes celestial, transcendent of this Crest and this _life_ when he’s in your arms.

“I’ll get him,” you whisper, and if he wasn’t wearing his helmet you imagine you’d be kissing him goodbye because getting up seems _agonizing_. His eyes are on you the whole time you rise to your feet, slowly letting your body drag against his in separation like you’re trying to maintain the suction between your bodies, afraid of the ‘pop’ if you pull away too quickly. You know he can’t feel it, know that these touches can’t mean as much to him as they mean to you, but once you’re on your feet you press your fingers into the hollow of his helmet, cupping his cheeks with your thumb running along the sharp edge. There is trust in your hands, bleeding from his mouth and filling yours, and when his hand reaches up slowly to grab your wrist you know it’s not to pull you away.

Being touched by Mando is something annihilating, a lethal weapon that he trains on your entirely too sensitive nerves. His thumb, a little cool to your heated skin, draws a delicate curve back and forth on the sensitive barrier below the heel of your palm.

Devastating.

And then the baby is still sobbing, harder than before, and you _have_ to part from him. You still take your time, pulling your hand out through his circular grip, and as you pull his fingers brush up against your palm, dragging and tangling with yours so loosely. You breath hitches, and you know his does too by the way his helmet jerks subtly, like a hiccup. It makes you smile a little, tiny quirk flashing on your face before you rip yourself apart from him to go to the baby. He notices how you make quick work of hopping down the ladder, and he listens intently.

The fleeting _woosh_ of the pram opening.

The intensifying of the crying.

The sound of your voice, soft and dripping in sugar glaze as you coo gently to the baby.

“I missed you, little one.”

“ _Shhhh_ , it’s _okay_. We’re okay.”

“I’m right here, little one. I’ll never leave you.”

Sweet everythings.

Were it not for the helmet, he probably wouldn’t have even been able to hear any of it; it’s a song he knows well, a tune he could listen to over and over and over again. The sound of your voice, reassuring his _ad’ika_ that he is loved, he is wanted, he is _safe_. It melts his heart, draws winding lines in the molten red mess of him and leaves stains on his lungs. The baby adores you - of this he is certain. He had thought at first that he would be jealous of the baby’s affection towards you. Returning to the Crest without so much as a greeting from the baby, watching him waddle over to you instead of him for attention. He doesn’t let on, but he likes getting bugged from time to time - he likes that the baby wants to spend time with him. And he could’ve sworn you’d steal that, take his child away and capture the entirety of his heart, push him out of his big green sights.

Instead, his heart grew.

It swelled when he watched the baby reach for your face, squeezing your cheeks and playing with your hair with infinite curiosity. It swelled when he watched you play with him, letting him chase around that stupid metal ball and chasing him around the cockpit - often times, when he comes back to the ship and catches you crouched down and running behind his squealing son, he thinks he might kiss you right then and there.

He thinks he may have fallen in love with you at the same pace the baby did.

And he swelled and swelled until eventually, he became twice as full as he was, twice the man, twice the protector. He’s reached a point of no return, passed a checkpoint that can no longer be erased, permanently devoted to you even if he may never be able to have you properly. His life is not one _meant_ to be stable, he was not meant to achieve the comfortingly static existence that he so craves. He feels bad for wanting these things - shouldn’t having you and the baby in his arms for even a night be enough? And yet he always finds himself longing for more, dreaming for less calamity and more security.

Quiet.

He’s pulled from his thoughts instantly as the sudden tranquil disturbs him - peace is not something he is well attuned to. Curious, his needy eyes drag him to the ladder, footsteps light and silent to maintain this gilded solace. When he looks down he can feel his helmet give way into his mouth, lungs a vacuum as all of the air sweeps out and spills in front of him - the ethereal sight of you rocking his cooing son back to serenity. The baby’s eyes are wide as ever, that delicate white shine sparkling in his eyes as you cradle him in your arms.

He can’t help but watch you for a moment. You truly do seem to be dancing, a duet for you and a green potato-sack child, bouncing lightly in a way that is not raucous but soothing. The motion is fluid as you pace slightly, swaying in a small circle. Your eyes are closed, probably detracting from your balance as you lean left-ward into the weight of the baby. He can tell you are in your own world, perhaps in a trance like he often is in these moments.

He wonders what your dream is.

As you begin to lean a little too far to the side for his liking, failing to notice the impending fate of toppling, he quietly hops down the ladder and comes up behind you. His right instinctively finds your waist, left hand on your shoulder. There are no thoughts as he touches you, only feelings and actions as he pushes lightly to truly capture your attention. You’re startled by him, eyes snapping open as you straighten your posture. The sudden movement startles the baby, and you both watch as his big, dark eyes begin to fill with seawater. You give him a big pout, trying your best to empathize with him, but this time there seems to be nothing you’re capable of doing to pacify him.

“I’m sorry,” Mando apologizes sheepishly. His hands leave your body almost as quick as they arrive, jerking back into himself. It’s too _new_ , too daunting to touch you without abandon. He needs your approval of every step he takes, every stroke of a finger. He wants to hear you say you want it, that you want _him_.

He is uncertain around you now. Before, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t supposed to be doing all of those sinful things like smiling, touching, comforting. But now he feels like he knows too much, has raised more questions than answers. You’d said you love him. He’s said he loves you. And yet that somehow hasn’t filled in all pieces of this fucked up jigsaw puzzle, pieces haphazardly scattered between couch cushions and under counters, some having seemingly dissipated. He wishes he had the gall to pull you against his chest, dip his helmet into the crook of your neck and envelop you, encase you in the weight intensity of his diamond intimacy. But _stars_ , is he even allowed?

He’d fucked it up from the start. People start their romantic bonds with dates, do they not? Meeting each other, _then_ spending time with each other, _then_ falling in love with each other, _then_ moving in together, marriage, and even then they may not have kids. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? But he’s done this whole thing backwards. Moving in and children first, falling in love with you second, and he _still_ is afraid to spend quality time with you. You deserve better, and he knows it. But he also knows that if this is what the maker had intended, if this was how he is supposed to have you, he’ll take every jumbled step in whatever order it’s thrown at him even if it meant one touch, one embrace, one more _“I love you.”_

You look down at the baby, then back up at him, tossing him a thoughtful look.

“It’s okay, baby,” you say with a soft smile. He can’t deny the way his heart flutters when you call him that - _baby_. “He’s a needy thing. Think he wants you to hold him, Mando.” Under the anonymity of his helmet he smiles too. When he lifts his arms to you the baby is grabbing in his direction, whiny sobbing because he knows no other way of getting what he wants, and Din thinks he might go boneless at the sight. He always seems to be melting at this little green creature, knees faltering when he reaches up to him in a silent sign that he wants to be held. You watch him carefully as he gets close to you, a kind of close that you like, taking the weeping baby into his embrace. It’s almost instant, their connection, as they gaze into each other’s eyes like they’re the only people for lightyears. Your hands rest on Din’s large arm, a seemingly risky move that you pray you won’t have to pay for, but they are so lost in each other that you can’t help but feel like you are intruding, invading a moment that is so sacred, should be private. You watch with a tender gaze as the baby reverts to a pile of coos, grabbing at Mando’s armor to keep his hands occupied. He is smarter than a baby, more delicate than a 50-year old, and the balance is lethal.

Din’s head tilts towards you for a moment, so fleeting that you can barely tell if it happened, but you still can. You still see. Your heart shatters as he begins to pull away from you, adverse to making you uncomfortable by being in your space. You grip on his arm tighter, this time suspending his attention over your gaze. When he looks at you he wonders how he could ever leave you, ever stop touching you once he’s started.

_Impossible._

“Please,” you plead lightly. You don’t want to come off as pathetic as you do, but you don’t want to leave any ambiguity - you want him to know what you’re asking for. Your eyes are wide, pained, and it shoots daggers through his throat to know that he’s hurt you, made you feel unwanted. “I - I like when you touch me.”

He’ll never know how you always seem to read his mind, always seem to know exactly what he needs to hear.

He dies right before your eyes, frozen and tense like his bones have filled with carbonite and his eyes have filled with beskar. He is staring at you, trying to determine if you are lying to him, if you’re even _real_. He can’t be sure of anything anymore. He doesn’t know why he always does this, tries to reduce the best moments of his life to something more digestible, mute the beauty with a flat matte finish, but as he looks down at your pleading eyes there doesn’t seem to be a word he knows that could dull the glimmer in your eyes.

“I like touching you, _cyar’ika_ ,” he whispers.

“Yeah, Mando?”

There’s a stuffed breath passing through his modulator, words hanging onto the ledge of a pause like sugar floss dripping from a spool into pools of droplets.

Sweet and heavy.

“Yeah, _cyar’ika_.”

It’s hesitant, bitter and difficult as his tongue passes it through his mouth; you know it’s always been hard for him to say these things. But _stars_ when you smile up at him like he’s made your day, your _life_ , like he’s cleared every sky for you and painted every sunset in your name, he’s pretty sure he said the right thing.

One of his hands leaves the baby to wrap around your shoulders, pulling you close to his breastplate. Your arms wrap around him, a silent plea to never let go, a quiet murmur that _you want him just as bad_. You wonder how it must look to the baby, his two estranged caretakers suddenly wrapped in each other like life itself depends on it, like you are absorbing each other’s oxygen and letting the silver fumes feed each other’s blood.

He has to take a moment to calm his breaths. He never thought he’d hold what could one day be his whole clan in his arms, the two most important creatures for galaxies to come situated in his embrace, under _his_ shield. When your hand reaches to cup the baby’s cheek, your gaze aglow at his typical furrowed brow and dumbstruck face, he knows.

He just knows.

“ _Ad’ika_.”

The word is lost in the space, floats away tetherless as it fails to grapple your line of sight and pull you towards him. It’s not the first time he’s said it, and it’s certainly not the first time you’ve heard it, but like most Mando’a words you let them fly over your head. It’s not a language you know, not a culture you’re familiar with, and you take it’s beauty for granted each time he shares it with you out of ignorance.

He wants to teach you.

“It means little one.” This catches your attention. Your head snaps up to his, eyes somehow locking onto his through his visor. “ _Ner ad’ika_. My little one. Son.”

“ _A - ad’ika_?” you repeat. You want to get it right, want to make him proud of you.

“That’s good,” he affirms. His grin splits his face in two and you can hear it, audible through his throat and his tongue and the voice modulator. “You can…call him that. If you want to.”

Your turn back to the cooing baby who you know isn’t oblivious but looks unassuming all the same. A hand comes to his side, pressed against the soft, thick brown cloak that he loves to be wrapped in. You lean in close to his face, enough that the top of your nose can brush his, affectionate like the things that keep you warm, the things that keep you snug.

“My everything,” you whisper lightly, eyes stuck on his. He has such a powerful hold on you, intense and unfair in how you will your eyelids to stay open because you don’t want to blink, don’t want to miss a second of him. “ _Ner ad’ika_.”

Din gets lost in your voice, tied in knots and tangled in the mulberry bush of your breath floating with the song of your cooing. He likes the way the word rolls off of your tongue, floats out of your mouth the way morning light seeps through a window. And he wants more.

“We are _buir_ ,” he blurts. “His parents.”

_We._

You have always known that the baby was never your foundling, was never your child to claim. When you began growing close to that sweet creature, you couldn’t help but err on the cautious side. The relationship Din has with his baby is steel, unyielding lead forged from the powerful rigidity of his own sins to be molded into something more beautiful, something indestructible. To ruin it, to show up as a meaningless but distracting pink stain on their bond between them, was the last thing you wanted to do.

But _Maker_ , you love this baby more than anything.

“ _Buir_?” The word tastes sweet on your tongue, feels like it was meant to roll off of it. You grin at him foolishly, unable to control your unbridled glee at his spontaneous lesson. He is letting you into his culture, showing you his livelihood. You want to be a part of him, be a part of his Creed, cement yourself into the woolen tapestry of his soul and indent yourself into his promises.

“You’re a natural, _cyar’ika_ ,” he praises. You wish you could see him, bask in the glow of his bursting smile, but that’s not how this works. That’s not the deal you cut, not part of your agreement with the devil, so you can’t ask for these silly things. It’s so silly.

“What about that?” you ask. He tilts his head, a common gesture for him, but this is not a tilt leaning towards condescension. He is not fed up with you - he is confused.

“I just…you’re always calling me that word,” you say, smile turned into an expression of slight nervousness, perhaps even a little shame. “Since we met.” You’re full of regret already, feel stupid for asking, foolish for bringing it up, because now you can’t even hear him _breathing_. He’s gone dead silent, probably wondering how much dumber you could get since this is a word he has always said to you, a word he began saying not long after he met you; it’s probably just your name in Mando’a, or perhaps “toad.”

“ _Cyar’ika_?” he repeats, a little choked. You nod. It’s comforting to hear, familiar, and with any luck he’ll tell you it just means “human.” The word presses into your sternum, kisses your forehead.

Mando is not as serene.

He feels a panic settle into his chest at your question, his mind suddenly forgetting the bliss of being able to touch you as he is overwhelmed with conflict, torn with his internal controversy. He should’ve known you’re smarter than him, should have known that the moment you felt comfortable to do so you’d bring it up. Suddenly this secret feels dirtier, filthier, the rank sludge of it like globs on his cheeks that permeate through the air and leave a foul stench. He knows he shouldn’t mind telling you as much as he does, and this brief clarity allows him just enough headspace in order to let air rush into his lungs like a monsoon. This word, this stupid term of endearment, was supposed to be a secret for a kriffing reason - but he can’t lie to you.

_He can’t lie to you._

“Sweetheart,” he breathes. “It means sweetheart.”

Your smile returns with full force.

It’s almost teasing, playful in the way you look at him, because you know the Mandalorian does not get nervous. This man isn’t supposed to get bashful, feel embarrassed for his actions. And yet here he is, head turned to the ground like a child getting caught elbow deep in the cookie jar. _So sweet, so gentle. Only for me._

“How do you say it?” you ask coyly. You’ve almost forgotten about the baby, too engrossed in this foolish pile of beskar and his sweet antics.

“You don’t have to-”

“I’m just asking, Mando.” There’s a sing-songy lilt to your voice, like he knows you’re enjoying yourself, and stars how he wishes he could kiss that smug look off of your pretty face.

“ _Cyar’ika_ ,” he repeats. He wants to play, wants to beat you at your own challenge. You can tell he’s grown mischievous, tasting the sweetness of a smile in his voice as he says it to you. He seems lighter, more assured and far less apprehensive. This is the Mando you fell in love with, the man that stole your heart and your breath and every last waking fiber of pain in your body until you felt safe, wanted, _cared for_.

“Say it again,” you plead, voice hushed. He hears your secret, your unspoken desire, and he grins underneath his helmet.

“ _Cyar’ika_.”

“Again.”

“ _Cyar’ika_.”

“Againagainagain-”

“ _Cyar’ikacyar’ikacyar’ika_ -” You’re both cut off by your own laughter, giggles filling the small space that you’re learned to call home. His huffs of joy burst through his voice modulator as he melts at the sight of you, so enthralled with his own language and the way he uses it to tell you the most precious things. Even the baby, picking up on the social cue and delighted to see his two favorite people so joyous, begins to share his own laughter, tiny squeals of delight pawing at the rich harmony of your voices.

His head comes down to yours in the bright yellow haze like daisies under his chin, and when you look up at him properly his forehead is pressed against yours, lips borrowing your air as his hand comes up to press the back of your head into him. Your hands fly up to the sides of his helmet, palms pressed into the smooth flat hollows by his cheeks.

A Keldabe kiss.

He’s suddenly intoxicated by the intense intimacy, gazing into your eyes like they’re something he could get lost in, never return from. He’s always wondered how it would feel, being so emotionally attached to someone and then _actually_ getting to act on it, getting to drown in it. There is something in the shimmer of your eyes, in the way his foundling fits so perfectly between him and you, in the way that everything he loves and everything that loves him is all _right kriffing here_. There’s something about it that makes tears well in his eyes.

But warriors don’t cry.

Especially not for such temporary emotions.

He stays like that for a while, senses numb and eyes foggy as he squeezes his eyes shut, lets the mere notion that you are with him fill his body and soothe his aching heart. Maybe _this_ is nirvana, an existence in which he is nobody and yet can feel everything, in which the hollow beskar on him is filled with the rose plaster of your love to harden and remain for eternity.

And then there’s whimpering.

His eyes shoot down to ad’ika, instantly concerned for his state of discomfort. But all that he finds staring back at him are those two black eyes, wide and shivering with a curiosity for the world that Din knows he’ll never be able to quench. Not living with him. When he looks back up at you there are tears on your cheeks, your eyes shut as you try to well your sorrows. His free hand thumbs at your tears, letting them soak into the cracked skin of his palm. It distracts you slightly, a soft touch from rugged hands, as he short-circuits trying to figure out what he can do for you. Ask if he’s made you upset.

“ _Cyar_ -”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, clearly the only sound you can make with you releasing a loud sob. “I’m really sorry - _stars_ , I’m so _sorry_ Mando.” His heart begins racing, not in the good way, and he thinks he might cry with you. What changed?

“ _Please_ , sweetheart, tell me,” he pleads, unsure of how to console you but desperate to do so. “I won’t be mad.”

“It’s nothing,” you insist, but he can hear your voice crack through your squeaky whisper, feels your body shake in his arms.

“Then _tell me_ , sweetheart. I…i’m here for you too. ” You muster the courage to look up at him, and he could swear the sight of him alone makes you sob _harder_ , releases out something too violent for such a pretty face as yours. It tears at your soft cheeks, leaves bruises under your eyes, and he wants to stop your pain, wants to soothe you and heal all of your wounds the way you have always done for him. He wants to be able to care for you as well as you can for him, wishes to give you those little hugs you’re so good at, put bacta spray on your bleeding skin.

“I-I ju-st,” you begin, feeling that shame rise again as you try your hardest to finish your stupid thought - your dumb, _idiotic_ thought - “I wanna kiss you.”

Bacta spray can’t fix that.

“I - don’t worry about it, Mando,” you add almost immediately, as if you want to remind him that you’re not stupid, that you aren’t asking him to beak his own creed for something as inferior and foolish as _love_. You know what he can and can’t do for you, know he’d rather die than destroy his own livelihood.

This is the way.

“I kn-know how-” you shudder, making him pull you closer, into his chest where you might be able to hide, find solace in ignoring the one reminder that you can never have him the way you want, the way you _deserve_. Because it’s not just about a kiss, it will _never_ just be about a kiss.

He will never be your eternity.

“I know I can’t.”

His heart breaks, shatters and spills out of his ribcage in shards that cut up his lungs, leave dents and piercings in his cartilage. _You can. My sweetheart, you can. You can have me forever. I could kiss you whenever I want to. Devote your life to me, tie your soul with mine. Give me your everything, because you already have mine._

“Yeah,” he whispers back. “You can’t.”

He could never ask you to do something so cruel.


End file.
